Expert reviews and ratings

A dispirited attempt at marrying the best of old-school brawlers like Streets of Rage with the obsession-inducing trappings of an action-RPG, Sacred Citadel had the potential to be so much more than it is. Plagued by a ho-hum delivery and combat occasionally interrupted by redeeming boss fights, it fails to distinguish itself.

t's feisty, fun and co-op friendly, so as pick-and-play brawlers go, there's little to complain about with Sacred Citadel. Make the trek on your own, however, and it's a slightly different story owing to a rinse-and-repeat sameness that's harder to deny when it's just you eyeballing the same old swarms of enemies over and over again.

It took me around five hours to complete the main story, and there were still challenges and special levels to complete. For $15, you and two of your friends can have a decent time beating up monsters in co-op.

For now, however, Sacred Citadel is only recommended for fans of the franchise or genre. There is fun to be had here but only in small bursts, so it's hard to recommend the $15 investment. With a disappointing combat system and ineffectual character progression, the game falls short of its potential.

The bankruptcy proceedings of Los Angeles based THQ are finally over, and one of the big winners of the public auction is European publisher Deep Silver. The publisher is probably best known for the Dead Island games and now owns the Metro series,...

It’s rare these days for a publisher to take a franchise off in a genuinely left-field direction, but Deep Silver have managed it with Sacred Citadel, a digital download only prequel to upcoming action RPG Sacred 3 that happens to be... a...

Sacred Citadel is a blast from the past with a beautiful, stylized and modern coat of paint. Whether you are interested in a solid action affair or a healthy dose of lightweight RPG, this game does not dissappoint. With solid graphics, music and sound,...

Unfortunately it doesn't even come close. A lot of what it does feels like a paint by numbers approach to ensuring basic gameplay elements to the genre are present but fail to be interesting, but what hurts this game more than anything else is that it is so ridiculously easy to the point of being boring. If you have a hankering for a beat 'em up / RPG hybrid, you can do better than Sacred Citadel.

Sacred Citadel gets a lot of core mechanics right, and it's always fun to load up on powerful new loot. If you just want to run around and smash stuff and don't care about compelling antagonists or heroes, this does the job. But if you're looking for the total package, plenty of great alternatives are already out there.

It's an okay game, a solid arcade throwback, but it's a mere face in a crowd and doesn't stand out very much. It'll give you five or so hours of satisfactory action, dishing out amusement and annoyance at varying points, and while I think it's worth checking out for Sacred fans, most brawler connoisseurs would be better off sticking with the classics.

The Sacred series is back with a spinoff game called Sacred Citadel. Unlike the other action RPGs in the series, Sacred Citadel is a 2D side-scrolling beat ‘em up that takes place in the Sacred world but plays nothing like what you're used to. Sure,...